This is Greg Armstrong's Home Page!

A New Spring

In October of 2004, C-3PO was one of the inducties into the Robot Hall of Fame. While in Pittsburgh for the ceremony, Anthony Daniels, that actor who plays C-3PO, visited CMU's campus and interacted with one of the real robots I work with, Valerie, our robot receptionist.

I live in the wonderful city of Pittsburgh, where the weather can be as good or as bad as you like. I fix robots at Carnegie Mellon University for a living, and read Science Fiction for fun.

My Kevin Bacon Number is 3.
I've shaken hands with William Shattner when he visited CMU researching a book.
William Shatner was in The Kidnapping of the President (1980) with Maury Chaykin
Maury Chaykin was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon

Contacts:

A very good friend is Bink. Check out her time machine, I mean Delorean!

Wen Spencer is a wonderful author. She won the Campbell Award in 2003.

Robert Saywer is another outstanding author, winner of both a Hugo and a Nebula (among others).

Henry Tjurnlund is a fine artist, though I don't know of any awards he's won.

Terran Lane is an AI researcher and associate professor at University of New Mexico. I know other AI researchers (I work for several of them), but you can find them through other links on this page.

I met Chris Moriarty at the 2003 world SF con, and found her to be a fun person. I enjoyed her book Spin State immensely.

Robots:

The oldest robots I work on are named Xavier and Amelia. Here is a picture of them:

Amelia is now in her third incarnation (the second being Vikia) as the robot Grace. The Swathmore website is a bit out of date, it doesn't mention the 2003 IJCAI/AAAI conference in Acopolco, Mexico.

Grace was one of the speakers at the first annual induction ceremony of the Robot Hall Of Fame.

Valerie is a robot similar to Amelia and is now the Roboceptionist in Newell-Simon Hall.

Flo and Pearl are the prototype Nursebots. Because of them (and Xavier), I got to meet famous people like William Shatner, Katie Couric, and Joe Engleberger (father of industrial robotics, for you non-roboticists).